[MarcusBelben]

Great stuff Imogen and all.  It’s vital to keep the needs of our audience in mind.  I can see that some distance learning content should be easily accessible to a mass audience and requires little interactivity (LEAN), ‘discussion’ perhaps most effectively provides AGILITY needed to respond to students on a more personal need basis also required.

I’m interested in reviewing the role of ‘discussion’ in distance learning – please see and add to our debate leading to presentation at University of Birmingham in a couple of weeks:

http://storify.com/UOBETT/how-important-is-discussion-in-d-learning/edit

I’ve already referenced a couple of papers suggested in this forum.

Thanks again

[MarcusBelben]

Wiki has a good definition of learning – Learning is acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. Most of that you have done in (1), and it is ‘active learning’ as you have chosen what you want to learn rather than being forced to learn it.

You have proven your learning (as you suggest) by all measures in (2) and are now, in fact, onto next ‘level’ by explaining your learning to others:

 
“if you can’t explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough” Albert Einstein
Your key dilemma seems to be gaining confidence to move on to the next ‘learning experience’, so you ‘feel’ like you have learnt.  Does peer-to-peer feedback line this help?

[MarcusBelben]

This is first exp of MOOC for me, and my level of participation has been low, mainly down to other commitments. ‘Facilitating learning’ is what being any kind of  teacher is all about (See latest Ken Robinson TED talk).

As my confidence to engage, and finding people, like yourself, who I want to engage with, within the MOOC, so is my level of participation and commitment to MOOC.  The resources are great, but it is the people (mainly other students) who have been the hook and the reason to come back.

Being a MOOC lurker makes you feel like you should appologise for ‘lurking’ or for not being more ‘active’, but as a self-identified ‘learner’ my confidence will be low, and my familiarity with the MOOC also low, so getting the supportive environment right from the start, to encourage less confident students to contribute is crucial (much as in any learning environment).

Thanks again for post – please check out my latest blog –

http://birminghamlives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/keeping-d-in-distance-learning.html

and on storify.com/UOBETT

M

 

 

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